Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday June 19, 2014 @02:27PM
from the and-to-my-terrrible-son-william dept.

New submitter UrsaMajor987 (3604759) writes I recently retired after a long career in IT. I am not ready to kick the bucket quite yet, but having seen the difficulty created by people dying without a will and documenting what they have and where it is, I am busy doing just that. At the end of it all, I will have documentation on financial accounts, passwords, etc., which I will want to share with a few people who are pretty far away. I can always print a copy and have it delivered to them, but is there any way to share this sort of information electronically? There are lots of things to secure transmission of data, but once it arrives on the recipients' desktop, you run the risk of their system being compromised and exposing the data. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is paper still the most secure way to go?

You could send them an encrypted file (#1) now with all the info you wish to share with them. Along with a password for a file that will arrive when you die. Then set up a service like deathswitch.com and have another encrypted file sent to them (#2). The password they already possess unlocks #2 and that contains the password(s) for #1.

wrote up the entire list on paper form and electronic on a flash drive. He laced them in a safety deposit box and shared the key with his executor who in turn had a copy of his will.

When he did pass away it was a pretty smooth process getting all of the information needed to close accounts, collect on policies, etc. The only thing that had a hiccup was property in a state with different probate laws but that too worked itself out.

Even though the "ask a lawyer, not Slashdot" answer gets trotted out all the time, I think it's appropriate here. Lawyers do this sort of thing for a living. Probably cheaper in the long run to ask one.

Find a young child to give all your memories to. Hopefully he doesn't run away after learning the horrible secrets of the IT world.

long time since I read that book.

I use keepass to keep my passwords for various things encrypted on my systems. It works with windows, max, linux, android, and probably iphones. Then you just have one password to share and all of your information is unlocked. Send it to them in a secure fashion or come up with some sort of shared storage they can access (dropbox) so that you can update passwords as they need to change and then you can put your password for keepass in your will so they don't have access to anything until you die.